Saturday, February 25

Cuffy asked me, “Jazzy Cat, how do you think the universe started and what do you think of evolution?” I said, “Cuffy, while I am a smart feline, I am going to rely quite a bit on what I have learned from Dr. R.C. Sproul of Ligonier Ministries (http://www.ligonier.org/). It is really interesting to hear Dr. Sproul speak of his debate via correspondence he had with the late Dr. Carl Sagen. Here goes.1. If there ever were a time when there was nothing, there would be nothing now.2. Since there is something now, there has always been something.

3. This something must have the power of being in and of itself and not require anything ‘to be’.

4. The choices are either matter/energy or a necessary intelligent supreme being.

5. It is inconceivable that unintelligent, powerless matter/energy has this power of being.

6. It seems to me that logic screams for a necessary intelligent being with awesome power to be the entity that has always been and has the power to be in and of himself.

7. This Supreme Being created the universe.

Just as there is a lot of political propaganda involved in the human causation of global warming debate, I believe there is a lot of anti-religious influence in the evolution debate. Quite simply, atheists are eager to prove that a supreme being does not exist. In both global warming and evolution, I believe that objectivity and conclusions from data are suspect. I have not studied evolution theory very much. However, I find it hard to believe that a very complicated organ that is necessary for an animal to live has to evolve for millions of years to become functional. What would make a fantastically designed organ keep evolving to that perfection while it was worthless. Can you imagine an airplane flying while it is evolving wings?"

7 comments:

Acquinas tried something like this.But, ultimately, all it shows is that there must have been a first mover.Thats all.The inability to believe as stated in #5 is a personal issue, not a logical one.All of this, of course, is based on the idea of linear time. Of cause and effect. There's growing evidence that these concepts are, in fact, not valid, but are rather illusions created by our brains and that all things exist all at once, as it were. All time is now.

Moleboy,Thanks for the thought. #5 simply states that logic would require that the something that has the power of being in and of itself would be an intelligent being not inert matter. From nothing, nothing comes; therefore, something has always been. I would be interested in your thinking on where our brains came from to have the illusions you refer to. Do you believe matter exists?

"something that has the power of being in and of itself would be an intelligent being not inert matter"that is a logical fallacy.(I am probably spelling that incorrectly)It is not logically sound.Our brains have many illusions.We dream.We hallucinate.We see things that aren't there.We are, in fact, limited by our perceptions.There are people who live with black and white vision. There are people who see in only two dimensions. You can't assume that just because you can sense something that you actually sense it acccurately.I do believe that matter exists (whether I see the rock or not, it still hurts when it hits me), however I don't believe we see the fundemental state of it.We live in a generated world, a world generated by our human senses. Actually, if you think about it, our primary sense (vision) is lying to us constantly. Remember you aren't seeing anything in 3 dimensions. What comes into your eyes is then projected onto a flat screen. Your brain then takes these two images and resolves them into a functional, 3-dimensional image.Ultimately, we see in two dimensions and use a stereo effect to create something, which while functional, may not be real, in a sense.

(note that I was quoting you when I said: "something that has the power of being in and of itself would be an intelligent being not inert matter")I do, actually, have training in philosophy.Descartes makes a crucial flaw in the statement "I think" (or doubt) "therefor I am."it should actually read "I think, therefor there is thought"I'm going to have to side with acquinas on this. He was much smarter than you and I put together (which isn't to say anything bad about either of us, just that Tommy was a once in a generation mind), and all he could get to prove was that there was SOMETHING that caused everything (and even that proof is questionable). He was never able to prove that this 'first mover' was sentient.This is why it is called faith.I'm always vaguely troubled by attempts to logically prove God.It has always seemed to me that God is beyond logic, and that if we COULD prove such a being existed, that it would, almost by definition, no longer be something we could call divine.

Yes, I think faith comes into play. But it is not a blind faith because we have God's revelation in the Holy Bible which includes some amazing prophecy and history. It was written over many centuries with a common theme and relates many supernatural events. Are you a believer in the gospel as presented in the Holy Bible?

belief in the Bible IS faith. The prophecies are interpreted and reinterpreted again and again.However, none of them are provable in any non-faith way.Same with the history, really. Very little of it is verifiable.And all that is OK.At least in my opinion.I don't happen to believe in the gospel of the bible and don't believe that it spoke literally of actual events.I do believe, though, that it may contain wisdom and message of God (though I find another path to the divine).It seems to me that, as Christ does so often in its pages, the text speaks primarily in metaphor and allegory and story, not in literal, objective history.